Bob Connolly is a partner with GeyerGorey LLP. He is the former Chief of the Antitrust Division’s Philadelphia Field Office. He left the Division in 2013 after 33 years. He publishes an award winning blog, cited by Judge Richard Posner, Cartel Capers, www.cartelcapers.com.

In Part 1 of this article (here), I argued that the Sherman Act was unconstitutional as a criminal statute because it is void for vagueness. A statute that criminalizes all restraints of trade cannot be saved by the Supreme Court explaining what Congress really must have really meant. What passed constitutional muster when the Sherman…

If you ever wanted to sell a student on pursuing a career in antitrust because of the interesting possibilities, Brent Snyder’s career (which is far from over) would be a good case in point. Mr. Snyder graduated with Honors from the University of Texas School of Law, where he was an Associate Editor of the…

If you get lost, sometimes you must go back and start again from the beginning. I’ve been a bit lost on whether the Sherman Act is unconstitutional as a criminal statute. It is well accepted that per se violations of the Sherman Act can be prosecuted criminally. An individual can be sentenced to up to…

By Robert E. Connolly[1] and Masayuki Atsumi[2] [This is Part 2 of a multi-part article on ways a foreign fugitive may be able to get some issues heard by a US federal court without surrendering to the United States and personally appearing in court. Part 1 can be found here: http://cartelcapers.com/blog/defending-foreign-fugitive-fugitive-disentitlement-doctrine/] A foreign defendant who…

By Robert E. Connolly [1] and Masayuki Atsumi [2] The fugitive disentitlement doctrine is an equitable doctrine under which a court has the discretion to decline to consider a petition of a defendant if that defendant does not appear before the court. “The paradigmatic object of the doctrine is the convicted criminal who flees while…

There has been much speculation about what a Trump presidency will mean for antitrust enforcement at the Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission. Much of the wonder is about whether Trump will take an activist approach he suggested during the campaign, for example, when he said he thought Amazon had “a huge antitrust problem” and…

In a press release issued on October 20, 2016, the Antitrust Division and the FTC issued antitrust guidance for human resource (HR) professionals and others who are involved in hiring and compensation decisions. While the guidance on how the antitrust laws apply to hiring is useful, the big news in the press release is:…

Thanks to my friend Jarod Bona at Bona Law PC, for alerting me to the September 30, 2016 Order of Judge James Donato regarding FTAIA issues in In Re Capacitors Antitrust Litigation, Master File no 14-cv-03264-JD (ND Cal.). It was obvious from the start of the DOJ criminal capacitors investigation that FTAIA issues were going…

The Antitrust Division has announced that three more companies have agreed to plead guilty in the electrolytic capacitor investigation. According to a DOJ press release of August 22, (here) Rubycon Corp, Elna Co, and Holy Stone Holdings Co, have agreed to plead guilty to fixing the prices of electrolytic capacitors sold in the United States…

One of the aspirations of many antitrust/competition lawyers worldwide is to achieve as much convergence as possible among competition authorities in enforcing competition law. Counseling companies and individuals who do business on a worldwide basis on the many differences in competition law can be inefficient, costly and result in less than optimal competition and deterrence…